The Hastings Center is the oldest independent, nonpartisan, interdisciplinary research institute of its kind in the world. The author’s approach regarding our responsibility in a pandemic is frequently referenced as the “fair Innings” argument. Elders have had more “innings” in…

There are more than 250,000 people in the U.S. at the end stages of heart failure. Of those about 15% are in critical need of a heart transplant. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) tightly regulates organ transplant…

I have always authored and posted my own essays but this one by Ezekiel Emanuel strikes home for so many of us who have experienced the loss of the process at the end of life...so I am sharing with all…

Medical ethics deals with choices made by clinicians and patients and the duties and obligations that follow. Central to medical ethics is informed consent and patient autonomy, i.e., the right to make decisions over one’s own body. As of this…

Is physician assisted dying/suicide (PAD/PAS) just the first step onto the slippery slope of normalizing suicide? Should we democratize suicide for all autonomous citizens, stripping away the physician’s involvement and clearing the decks of the ruse of easily manipulated subjective…

Baby boomers want to change the death experience. An overwhelming 80% of Americans want to die at home but the reality is that 60% die in the hospital and another 20% die in a nursing home. Many times, this shift…

The call from the nursing home came at 8 on Wednesday morning. Mom was not getting up for breakfast. Mom was always dressed, with make-up on by 6:30. I told the caller I had a 2-hour drive but was leaving…

What happens when you make a promise to yourself and to your mother “I will never…put you in a nursing home?” Does life get in the way of those plans and promises? I posit that it does, and painfully so.…

For the 86 percent of Americans who say they want to die at home, hospice programs make that desire increasingly possible. However, people often wait too long before seeking hospice care. In the United States, the average length of hospice…

July 2017 report published by the Population Research Bureau provides both good and bad news about our aging society and the prevalence of Alzheimer’s and vascular dementias. It is undeniable that the absolute number of Americans with dementia is increasing,…